Students need to have a reason to want to learn in your classroom. Have students pick one to three goals that they can focus on for the school year. They should be meaningful and relevant to the student and class. Refer back to these throughout the year so the students can determine their progress on the goal.
Code of Cooperation/ Shared Vision
This one is a process. Have students work in groups to determine what they need from themselves, their classmates, and their teachers in order for them to accomplish their goals. Make sure they focus on the positives not the negatives. Examples of some ideas would be: I need to raise my hand to speak, I need to turn my homework in on time.
Once students have created a substantial list, collect them and then group them into similar categories. I prefer to use an affinity chart approach where the students write each idea on a post-it note. Bring them back to the class and ask them what they would name the post-it note groupings. Most likely they should come up with four to five basic principles for the code cooperation. Some that have been used in the past have been: Responsible, Respectful, Be a Team Player, and Try Our Best.
From there I take their Code of Cooperation and come up with a shared vision, such as: "Our classroom is a student-centered, safe, environment where everyone is engaged in his or her's learning." From there, the class votes to accept the code of cooperation.
Standard Operating Procedure (SOPs)
The basics of this are that students are creating the rules for all aspects of the classroom. To start off, have the students come up with ideas of where they think rules should exist. You should get answers like bathroom, morning routine, group work, individual work, when someone is speaking, etc.
Put each idea on a separate poster and place them throughout the classroom. Then put the students into groups and assign each group to a poster. Have the group come up with rules for their poster. When they are done, have them rotate to the next poster and contribute to that poster. Eventually each group will have shared some ideas for rules on each poster. When all the groups have been around, come back together as a whole class and go through each poster crossing off ideas (or rules) that they don't want and circling ones that they want. My class does what we call, power voting where the majority gets the rule. Eventually, you have created a list of rules for each part of your day/ classroom.
These are then hung up around the classroom and are referred to constantly for the first couple of weeks until the students get them down. It's always nice to also refresh after a vacation too!
Goal Setting
Students need to have a reason to want to learn in your classroom. Have students pick one to three goals that they can focus on for the school year. They should be meaningful and relevant to the student and class. Refer back to these throughout the year so the students can determine their progress on the goal.Code of Cooperation/ Shared Vision
This one is a process. Have students work in groups to determine what they need from themselves, their classmates, and their teachers in order for them to accomplish their goals. Make sure they focus on the positives not the negatives. Examples of some ideas would be: I need to raise my hand to speak, I need to turn my homework in on time.Once students have created a substantial list, collect them and then group them into similar categories. I prefer to use an affinity chart approach where the students write each idea on a post-it note. Bring them back to the class and ask them what they would name the post-it note groupings. Most likely they should come up with four to five basic principles for the code cooperation. Some that have been used in the past have been: Responsible, Respectful, Be a Team Player, and Try Our Best.
From there I take their Code of Cooperation and come up with a shared vision, such as: "Our classroom is a student-centered, safe, environment where everyone is engaged in his or her's learning." From there, the class votes to accept the code of cooperation.
Standard Operating Procedure (SOPs)
The basics of this are that students are creating the rules for all aspects of the classroom. To start off, have the students come up with ideas of where they think rules should exist. You should get answers like bathroom, morning routine, group work, individual work, when someone is speaking, etc.Put each idea on a separate poster and place them throughout the classroom. Then put the students into groups and assign each group to a poster. Have the group come up with rules for their poster. When they are done, have them rotate to the next poster and contribute to that poster. Eventually each group will have shared some ideas for rules on each poster. When all the groups have been around, come back together as a whole class and go through each poster crossing off ideas (or rules) that they don't want and circling ones that they want. My class does what we call, power voting where the majority gets the rule. Eventually, you have created a list of rules for each part of your day/ classroom.
These are then hung up around the classroom and are referred to constantly for the first couple of weeks until the students get them down. It's always nice to also refresh after a vacation too!